


Eight Solid Hours and a Damn Good Mattress

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Leverage
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-06
Updated: 2010-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:18:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The art of the post-job nap.  Written for the picfor1000 challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eight Solid Hours and a Damn Good Mattress

By the time Hardison and Parker make it out of the bar and upstairs to Nate's loft, Eliot's already sacked out, sitting in the middle of the couch with his head tipped back and his arms flung wide. There's a spot of oil on his jeans, something suspicious on the toe of his boot, but if appearances can be trusted, he made it through this job with all the buttons on his shirt intact.

Hardison hmmphs with a judgment he can feel coming straight up from his soul and the embedded wisdom of his Nanna's training on the virtue of eight solid hours and a damn good mattress. "If I only slept ninety minutes a day," he says, tossing Parker a gummy bear from his pocket and trying not to be weirded out when she makes happy little snarling sounds as she eats it, "I sure as hell wouldn't do it in the middle of some guy's loft."

"He probably just falls asleep wherever," Parker observes, closing the loft door behind her before she points at her open mouth. Hardison tosses in another bear.

"Ain't right," he says, ambling over to flop down at Eliot's right side. He gives him a quick once over – no visible bruises; just the one cut above the eyebrow. Counts as a win. "Man needs a bed. Needs a bed and a _house_. Man gets punched and kicked, he needs to take it _easy_."

"I like it." Parker flops down on Eliot's left, tipping her head back against Eliot's shoulder. "Coming up here after a job, finding him asleep. It's familiar.

"Familiar and _dumb_."

"And it's practical. If we get another client right away, we're right here." She pats Eliot's knee and leaves her hand there.

Hardison leans forward and eyes her. "When do we get another client right away?"

"We _could_."

"In the history of God's sweet caper-town, when have we ever . . . "

Parker's right eye twitches.

Hardison gestures his surrender. "I'm just saying. All done."

"Although . . . "

"Although?" Hardison shakes his head. "Nuh-uh. Don't be starting with 'although.' I was done. You made your point – it's nap time. It's dumbass nap time, I don't need your – here, here, last bear, eat it up, chew on the bear, y'hear, let the sleepytimes happen." He throws a gummy bear at her head, hums his approval when she gobbles it up. "Bears need some digestion, head down, eyes closed."

She isn't swayed. "He never wakes up," Parker observes, circling her finger in front of Eliot's face as if there could be any doubt as to whom they're discussing. "All this commotion, and he just keeps sleeping. Don't you think that's weird? I mean, the man's a freaking _ninja_."

"Man's tired," Hardison says, yawning, inching left a little, not even trying to fight the soporific effects of Eliot's body heat. "'Sides, he can probably, you know, smell we're okay. Got some orange soda, got some fruit loops, it's all good. Special forces training for danger smells, something."

"Danger smells," Parker repeats, laying her head back down. Hardison can see her knees come into view as she curls up tight against Eliot's side. "Like . . . Old Spice."

Hardison gives that a second to sink in and make sense, but no. "The hell?"

"Cops wear it," she says. There's clearly a 'duh' implied.

"I was thinking cordite, stuff burning, blood, you know . . ."

"Cotton candy."

Hardison leans forward again. Parker's eyes are closed, and there's a tiny furrow between her eyebrows. "I'm sorry, the delicious mmhmmhmmm melt-in-your-mouth smell of cotton candy comes from the devil because?"

"_Clowns_," Parker whispers.

"There is stuff wrong with you," Hardison murmurs, settling back in against Eliot. "So much stuff. It's epic. You got stuff with _chariots_."

Parker huffs at him. "I'm not the one who names his gummy bears."

"I do not . . . okay, _once_, but . . ."

"And now it's naptime!"

Hardison glances at the ceiling, and the spitballs he and Eliot launched up there some 3am when they were job-happy and a little drunk – acid-green from torn-up post-it notes; yellow from a legal pad; pink from places it's probably best he forgets. "Naptime. Sleeping. Got it," he murmurs, biting back all the other things he could say in favor of closing his eyes, letting his head tip to the left, right into the crook of Eliot's shoulder where things mostly smell a little of sweat and a lot of laundry detergent, no danger at all if you're cataloging such things, and he's not even going to think about how he knows day-before-yesterday was the day Eliot went all basic training shit on his hamper, or that he knows that weird, pleasant smell he's registering beyond all that cotton and high-heat dryer business is Parker's shampoo, because he is smart, dammit, damn fricking smart, and laundry and shampoo – that is not smartness; it's madness. So no, nope, there's nothing to see here, nothing to pay attention to, nothing but dumbass naptimes, naptimes and . . . yeah . . . that. With the bears. And the stuff.

Parker snuffles softly – it's the last thing Hardison hears for a while. He doesn't hear the couch creak when Eliot shifts just a little, settling himself more comfortably between them, and he sure as hell doesn't see Eliot risking a satisfied smile.

Nate does. But it's not like it's the first time he's come home and found the kids sprawled on his couch, a criminal conspiracy of sacked-out bodies and tangled limbs, the whole lot of them marking time with some strange, three-part harmony of snoring. "Night," he says low as he walks past and happens to accidentally throw a blanket over their laps.

"Sleep well!" Parker whispers. "We can smell danger!"

Nate thinks about asking for all of three seconds, then turns on his heel and heads upstairs. He knows better. Sleeping now; weirdness later.


End file.
